Recently, Healthy Children Project put out a statement about our stance on the current events. “These are incredibly trying and painful times. As we negotiate the very current multiple impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, recent events remind us that systemic racism and social injustice are longstanding national plagues…For too long families of Black and Brown babies have lived in fear for their children, themselves and their loved ones. The Healthy Children Project and the Center for Breastfeeding will not tolerate injustice, hate, bigotry and racism in any form.”
We expressed our solidarity with birthing families, our staff, our participants, our families, our communities, and our friends and hold Black, Indigenous , Mothers of Color in our hearts, our mission and our vision and reiterated that we will not tolerate injustice, hate, bigotry and racism in any form. We especially remember the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.”
Our mission and focus is all about supporting mothers and their breastfeeding journeys. We know that Black women experience maternal mortality and morbidity at three to four times the rates of white women and infant mortality is twice as high for babies born to Black mothers when compared to babies born to white mothers. We also know that breastfeeding can help mitigate both of these unacceptable disparities.
We are taking steps to help Black mothers and Black communities while staying focused on what we do best; train people to assist with breastfeeding.
Healthy Children Project and the Center for Breastfeeding has always been committed to making lactation care community diverse and equitable. We have worked to make the Lactation Counselor Training Course (LCTC) accessible by giving scholarships each year to organizations such as ROSE and HealthConnect One.
But we realized that we could do even more. Towards that end, we announce that we have started an initiative called Accessing the Milky Way. This initiative will send Black, Indigenous , People of Color to the online LCTC by offering scholarships that range from partial to full.
The first phase of this initiative will provide full tuition for the online LCTC on full scholarship for 25 BIPOC. This Accessing the Milky Way scholarship will pay the entire tuition for the course.
In addition, we have started a fund to pay for the required text book and the testing fee for each of the 25 recipients to further eliminate barriers to becoming a Certified Lactation Counselor.
We invite you to nominate a person that you know who wants and deserves the opportunity to take the LCTC in order to better serve and support the mothers in their community. We will be accepting nominations now through July 10, 2020. If you would like to nominate an individual, please send an email to info@centerforbreastfeeding.org and include the nominee’s name, phone number, email address, city and state, and a short description of the work they are doing and the benefit to their community by them becoming a Certified Lactation Counselor. Self-nominations are welcome.
There are two fixed costs that cannot be covered by the scholarship. The cost of the text book is $75.75 and the fee to take the exam after the class (administered by the Academy of Lactation Policy and Practice) is $120. This additional $195.95 is another barrier to BIPOC getting training that will support the families in their communities. Healthy Children Project faculty is working to raise a total of $4900 which would cover these fixed costs for all 25 recipients of the scholarship. Those interested in growing this fund may visit the GoFundMe page here.